logsinthenight | EVENT LOG: HUNGER AND THIRST

characters: everyone.
location: around beacon.
date/time: september 19-30.
content: some new friends - or enemies? - seek offerings, and offer something in return
warnings: memories may involve violence, death, grotesque body horror. please cw as appropriate.

pining for the things i could have been.

Recently, the forest spirits have been agitated. The crooners, those that remain, chatter noisily and strut with purpose. The lunch lady hunches over their station and holds claws to their face, miming peering through dense brush. The skunk judge murmurs about the ones from the countryside. Word has passed beyond the reaches of Beacon's light - there are people in town, and they are mostly good this time. These lantern-bearers have lasted longer than most. They may even want to help.

Seems these spirits will have to see these people with their own eyes, and test those rumors themselves.

For the first two prompts below, please feel free to NPC spirits yourselves. However, if you prefer, you may post your toplevel under the MOD-CONTROLLED SPIRITS header and we will do our best to drop in and out with interactions as time permits. These are not intended to be one-on-one threads with spirits written by the mods, and you will likely not always want to wait for a mod reply at every step and may find yourself doing some minor NPCing all the same, but we will do our best to keep up with you and your thread partners who tag in!

In that header, please specify whether you want a friendly or antagonistic spirit, or if you want a surprise, you can always say "surprise me!"

ALL MY JOYS.

You come home to find spirits in your wardrobe, with socks on their hands and pants tied in daisy chains from wall to wall. Abruptly they squeak and dive for cover, or crash through windows in their attempts to escape. They steal things that are yours, only for you to find them days later, floating in the lake or buried in the greenhouse. Can you chase them down alone? Maybe you need some help.

Not all spirits are so troublesome. Maybe you turn up at The Landmark kitchen to find that one spirit has already gotten the coffee pot started - well, except it has poured instant cheese powder from a box of easy mac into the pot. But at least it's trying to help! Maybe you can show it how the machine works. Others wind up at Solis's labs where they thumb rapidly through books and peck at computer keys, and more than one takes samples from the shelves and shoves them in your face. Did you need this alien foot in a jar? No?

A pack of roving... branches? crawls around town. They have no mouths with which to speak, but instead vibrate and clack their many tangled limbs together. They grow in number and size, making a thicket of live wood that bars you from a doorway, completely fills up a section of the tunnels under the town - or makes an impromptu and convenient bridge, if you think that climbing on someone's limbs is appropriate. Is it?

Largely these spirits seem neutral, even benign. Confused. They might ask for your help, or try their best but they struggle to communicate even more than the usual forest spirits do. They have no sense of what your personal space is, though, and more than one will reach for a lantern to bring it closer and investigate. Awfully uncomfortable, so what are you going to do about it?

ALL MY GRIEF.

At any moment, the above interactions can go south fast if you meet the wrong spirit. The one who took your lantern? Decides to run off with it, leaving you gasping for air and with very few options if you are to survive. The branches constrict and crush you, or drop you suddenly in the river. Are they here to harm you, or just to test your limits?

Others will be malevolent no matter what. The scrapyard dog snarls and pulls at its chain as it watches the thing that stalks and hunts. A small herd of soft, wooly spirits crouch low to the ground, whimper and pant as if sick or starving, only to turn on you with vicious teeth once you seem invested in assisting. Better hope you have someone nearby who can help you fend them off. Or is it better to try to distract them and make an escape? Will they be convinced to stand down, or will they wear your face as a new mask?

ALL MY BONES.

You are directed by the local spirits to the dense curtain of trees where torchlight fades to darkness. The ones you are familiar with hang back, but nod for you to continue ahead alone, or with a friend or two if you prefer. The more people who go together, the stronger the connection - as indicated by the spirits grabbing at your hands and linking them together, and giving a very serious nod. Bring your offerings whether they be food, stories, gifts, or memories of your own, and hope they are sufficient. Place them on the forest floor, or hold them out to the air. The new spirits will find you, they promise; this is not a trick. Make yourselves comfortable on the damp, mossy ground and wait for the sound of footsteps in the leaf litter.

For this prompt, you are welcome to describe your arrival to the site if you like, but all that is required is a comment with the names of the people involved, and the offerings you bring. Characters can make multiple offerings and visit multiple spirits as many times as they wish.

Afterward, a spirit will lead you back to Bonfire Square and encourage you to tell others what you've learned from your new guests. No fair keeping the goods to yourself alone!

LEFT IN THE LONG NIGHT.

After connecting with spirits, you are led back to the bonfire, to recover and recuperate from the joining of hearts, minds, and memories. You will find yourself weary, in a way the flames seem to help. The glow of the campfire is comforting, tempting. It might be difficult not to fall asleep or try to draw others into enjoying the comforting lull of crackling firewood along with you.

The weariness does fade, after some time around the fire. You're not the only one resting from the experience in the glow of firelight — and there's likely things you've seen to share. Ideas and memories and pieces and figments of past to fit into place like puzzle pieces. Now is a good a place as any to share it, isn't it?

Lastly, those that approach a spirit in tandem will find an unseen consequence. A link between them that isn't so easily shaken by a short stay at the fireside. Characters will find that feelings and sensations seem to move from one to the other without warning. Fear, anger, mourning, resentment, joy, love. Touching makes the link stronger, but even distance isn't enough to stop it. Did you want to share night terrors, even a mile apart? Or to taste coffee, even though you're in the middle of brushing your teeth? Well, too bad. The effects will last for two weeks, whether you like it or not.

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Her wrist gets a gentle squeeze, and they duck their head a little at the praise, but they don't protest. That's something.

Then there's curiosity. "A break." They tilt their head a little, as if baffled by the idea. "From. Emotional things?" How do you take a break from emotions, Misty?

"Not turning everything off," she rushes to say, lest that idea be planted anywhere. "But if you have some big emotional breakthrough, you can take a day after to not do anything high emotion. Laze around, just do routine, let things be mellow. Not pushing yourself in any direction, I mean. Just being calm."

Nobody could, or should, be running at full capacity all the time.

Huh. That kind of makes them wonder a little at just how married to their routine they really are, even on a good day. "Hard to do that. When we're all bouncing emotions between each other's heads like this. But we had cocoa and washed our faces, anyway."

"Which is something. And when it's done with we're all within our rights to take a day and just laze in bed, nothing that asks anything much of us." He'll have patrols, he's always got patrols, but she has to be consistent with laying out options.

Soldat nods a little. Maybe they won't put off patrols, but... maybe they'll take a "night" off from lessons. Maybe. "I told him about the wall. At the old cabin." Where she'd framed the crack they made in her wall. They're still kind of salty about that, in an affectionate way.

There's no denying herself a grin at that.

"And what did he have to say about that?"

"That you are confusing and he does not understand why you do things." Soldat even manages an actual lightly teasing tone, there. It's true, of course, it's what Javert said, but saying it makes it kind of silly. And forcing themselves to inject tone helps with their own mood.

How she grins. Good to hear him indulging in those little human quirks, and good to know she can still keep people on toes.

"Can't call that unfair, and I might even go as far as to say I'm glad. Long as I stay confusing I'll never be too predictable. Why'd it come up?"

The grin makes them smile a bit, too, though they're not sure why it gets such a reaction out of her. "He said to get cleaned up before anyone else came home. I said you've seen worse from me. Including the crying and punching the wall. I think you've seen all of the worst of me."

"And it's hardly put a damper on anything." An affectionate little non-punch naturally follows, a nudge of knuckles to his flesh bicep. "Glad you wouldn't worry, though. Good to know I'm still safe and ripe for the crying."

They respond to the punch with narrowed eyes and a very careful shove, back-- metal hand, since they've still got her wrist in the flesh on. "Still safe. The safest. No one safer." Even Javert isn't quite safe for crying on all the time. They can't imagine sobbing into his shoulder like they just did.

Also, important question: "Are we rough-housing now?"

"Thank you." No small part of her flares with pride, even as she laughs. Safe is important. Safe is rare. More than many things, she would like to be that for him.

"We are, we're definitely rough-housing. You surprised?"

Soldat frees up her wrist to give the side of her head a gentle shove, instead. "I. Used to do this with Steve," they realize suddenly, recognizing the motion. Recognizing the same motion they've done to other people, in bits and pieces. "Wrestle. Shove him. Yank him around."

Laughing, she weathers it like a champ. Doesn't return it yet, believing realizations like the one happening in front of her needn't be accompanied so quickly with shoving. "Good you're getting it back, huh? I'll give you plenty of practice."

Mentally reviewing the handful of sensations they'd just been subjected to, Soldat chews on the inside of their cheek for a moment, then suddenly leans over to loop the metal arm arm around her neck, pull her in, and vigorously rub the knuckles of the flesh hand against her head. Not hard, but enough to muss her hair and be felt.

They did that. They did that to Steve, they know it, and Steve had laughed and pretended to struggle and poked them.

Something like an oof follows, laughter not far behind. No pinching or grabbing, as she's shifted back to the flat-planes approach to making contact; nothing but her open hands pressed to his chest lightly enough to impart it's all part of the game. "Hey--"

"What? You said we're rough-housing. This is rough-housing. Right?" And it doesn't bother them, at least for a moment. They can have her right there, and she's laughing, and they're smiling, and it's okay.

They don't let her go yet, but they do soften to kiss the top of her head.

"We are and it is, but I can't go slinging arms around your neck yet. Cheating."

But she can feel enough to parse out what he does, and it's as endearing as anything. Enough that she stills a moment, permits a moment for it to sink in, before reaching up and over his shoulder to ruffle his hair. She can't comfortably reach beyond the back of his head, but she'll make up for it with vigor.

"Tactical advantage," Soldat corrects, and then gives a startled laugh and ducks away from her mussing, freeing her at the same time.

EVENT LOG: HUNGER AND THIRST

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